OUR VIEW: Defeat ballot questions

The interests of Massachusetts residents will be served best by a "no" vote on all three ballot questions on Tuesday.

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southcoasttoday.com

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Posted Oct. 26, 2010 at 12:01 AM

Posted Oct. 26, 2010 at 12:01 AM

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The interests of Massachusetts residents will be served best by a "no" vote on all three ballot questions on Tuesday.

Question 1 would repeal the sales tax on alcohol. Until last year, alcohol was exempt from the state sales tax, but lawmakers scrapped the exemption to help fill budget gaps created by the recession.

Backers of the repeal make a sensible argument on the surface, but when you look deeper, the premise is flawed. They say the sales tax on alcohol is a double tax because alcohol is already subject to excise tax at the wholesale level.

The problem is, the excise tax is so low it doesn't come close to taxing alcohol fairly relative to other products. The excise tax on beer, for example, is just 11 cents a gallon.

According to George Hacker of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who testified before a state legislative committee in favor of the tax, the excise tax on beer has lost so much value with inflation that it now represents just 27 percent of its value in 1975.

If the tax in Massachusetts had risen with inflation it would have generated an extra $200 million last year, he said. The sales tax is actually cheaper, since it is expected to raise about $80 million.

It also serves the dual purposes of discouraging excessive drinking and providing money to support existing state funding for addiction treatment centers — centers like High Point, which provides $35 million in services each year in New Bedford, Plymouth and Brockton.

Question 2 would repeal the affordable housing law known as Chapter 40B. The law is certainly flawed, but we advocate reform, not repeal.

40B creates badly needed affordable housing in a high-cost state. It allows more older residents and young people just starting out to remain in the towns where they want to live.

When new housing is built, 40B encourages builders to offer both market-rate units and those designated as affordable, helping to keep income levels integrated — a far healthier dynamic than isolating lower-income people in certain neighborhoods or communities.

Excessive housing costs hurt the entire economy, and 40B has been a useful tool to address the problem.

Question 3, the most widely debated of all, would cut the state sales tax by more than half, reducing it from 6.25 percent to 3 percent.

This petition represents, in part, a reaction to the tax hike last year that raised the rate from 5 percent. Anti-tax crusader Carla Howell, however, has never met a tax repeal she didn't like. She was the person behind the 2002 ballot question to eliminate the income tax entirely, and she co-chairs the Alliance to Roll Back Taxes, the campaign formed to get Question 3 on the ballot.

As we have pointed out in the past, all three candidates for governor, including Republican Charlie Baker, oppose the question because of the havoc it would wreak on the state budget. So does the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a moderately conservative, business-backed fiscal watchdog group.

Cutting the sales tax to 3 percent would eliminate $2.5 billion from the budget. Added to the existing deficit, the question would force budget cuts for the coming fiscal year of $4.5 billion.

Though the overall budget is very large at $32 billion, nearly half of that spending is legally required. Lawmakers have discretion over only $16.9 billion, and that's the portion of the budget from which they provide aid for many of the local services residents see most, like schools, police and firefighters.

Those discretionary items would have to be cut by a staggering 28 percent to adhere to Question 3. Most reasonable people can see that course of action is ill-advised.

Supporting the question as a protest vote to bring the sales tax back to 5 percent will not be necessary; Gov. Deval Patrick has publicly said he would like to take the tax back to 5 percent once revenues recover from the recession. Voters want it, and he gets that message loud and clear.

Just as clear are the wise choices for Tuesday's ballot questions: Vote "no" on 1, 2 and 3.